“Rainwater Cassette Exchange”

0:000:00

Via Pitchfork

When Bradford Cox sings about love and desire, he always sounds so wistful and defeated. It's as though he's already given up on the possibility that his feelings may be requited, but he's too lost in infatuation to avoid diving into self-destructive romantic obsession. This is particularly true of "Rainwater Cassette Exchange", in which he writes about a particularly painful crush in terms of passive self-harm, inviting the object of his affection to destroy his body and mind in a tone so fragile and drowsy that the darkness of his lyrics barely registers in casual listening. The song's mood owes a lot to the sound of Cox's voice. It comes across as a quiet sigh at the center of an arrangement that buries the gentle rhythmic bump and earnest sweetness of a vintage girl-group number beneath the band's usual haze of reverb and distortion. It doesn't break any thematic or aesthetic ground for Deerhunter-- it's essentially the halfway point between the lyrics of Microcastle's "Agoraphobia" and the music of "Vox Humana" from Weird Era Cont.-- but "Rainwater Cassette Exchange" is nevertheless a solid addition to the Deerhunter canon, and it absolutely nails the blend of naked yearning and neurotic passivity that makes Cox one of the most consistently compelling figures in contemporary indie rock.